ARTICLE

Find Glee Star Jane Lynch's response in a Q&A Session

By InCinemas / 30 May 2011 (Monday)

Source: Alliance Entertainment Singapore
[Watch Out for the link to Spontaneous Giveaways below]

The funniest woman on television is also its most fearless. Prepare to lock shields – and quips – with Glee’s award-winning warrior, who dishes how she “c’s” the second season of your favorite show.
By Jorge Carreon

Sure, the youthful cast of Glee delivers its musical goodness with plenty of teen spirit. But, even this talented bunch needs a watchful eye to keep them in key. Enter the formidable talents of Jane Lynch. Already an audience favorite with memorable turns in the films The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Best in Show, Lynch has created a niche as the quintessential character actor that could deliver guaranteed laughs with just an arch of her brow. But, when she swaggered onto Glee with track-suited comic ferocity as Sue Sylvester, an icon was born.

Now enjoying her second season, the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning Lynch is bemused that the media is quite taken with citing her as “the face of power.” Yes, she is a statuesque blonde who looks like she can annihilate you with unforgettable zinger. Yet, her warm and winning smile diffuses it all in a second. Still, to be frank, she is not too far from her alter ego as the power source of McKinley High in terms of the respect she commands.

“Is being a woman of power something that was in a sheet somewhere?” Lynch jokes. “That's been said to me a couple times today. I try not to step outside of myself too much. I think you're a woman of power if you stay very in the moment.”

Lynch scored heavily with Sue’s outrageously wicked campaign to undermine Will Schuester (co-star Matthew Morrison) and his glee club. It has been essential to the show’s formula, to present the journey of the underdog winning against all odds. However, the show’s creative is also facing the challenge of evolving its large cast of characters head on and Lynch is thrilled. The second season of Glee finds Sue providing unexpected and humanizing reveals of her family life, including the introduction of comedy legend Carol Burnett as her Nazi-hunting mother. And, after having her “Vogue” moment during the first season, Sue is “shuffling” center stage again for a few more showstoppers to keep her co-stars audiences on their toes.

“I would hate it if within five years,” Lynch says, “and I'm walking around, waxing smart and it doesn’t have anything underneath it. Or worse, having fans say ‘Sue Sylvester is doing that thing that used to be really charming back in 2009.’”

Q: Archetypes are enduring for a reason. How do you keep Sue Sylvester from not lapsing into a parody?
JANE LYNCH: I think one of the things that the writers are doing for the second season is they're giving Sue more dimension. You can only go six or seven episodes of a character before you have to start explaining it. It starts losing its charm unless you decide that the character has a little more dimension. She started out as an archetype, but my responsibility as an actress is to get in there in a deeper human way and come up with a reason why she’s so darn mean. No one is mean for no reason. I had my own notions of what that was. Not really specific, but I had my own notions. And so did, obviously, Ian Brennan, who writes almost everything I say. Naturally, if you continue to create and stay creative within it, you’re going to start deepening things.

Q: So, where do we see Sue in Season 2 of Glee?
LYNCH: Sue is a warrior. Although she made up with the Glee Club at the end of the first season and said, “Let’s band together and be friends,” she can’t go very long without a fight. So, she decides she’s going to fight the Glee Club because she’s bored. I think Will Schuester (co-star Matthew Morrison) says, “I thought we were friends.” And Sue says, “Ah, I got bored with that.” So she’s out to destroy the Glee Club yet again. Let’s see, what happens. I get married, I'm not going to say to whom, but I wore a beautiful track suit wedding dress. I do a duet with Carol Burnett. We see more of Sue’s sister Jean, and we get more clues what her childhood was like. Carol Burnett plays our mother and she’s a Nazi hunter, who’s hunted that last Nazi, and she’s home now, to see how her girls are doing, after like 30, 40 years.

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A quick note here before continuing with the rest of the Q&A with Jane Lynch, Glee: Season 2, Volume 1 and Glee Encore are out on DVD from 27 May 2011.

[SPONTANEOUS GIVEAWAY!]
To celebrate the release of Glee Season 2 Volume 1 & Glee Encore, Alliance Entertainment Singapore Facebook is giving away 3 x Glee hampers! Each hamper consists of Glee Encore, Glee: The Music, Volume 5 & Glee Presents the Warblers!

Click HERE to participate in the Giveaway! (Contest closes end of 3rd June 2011)

The other features in Glee: Season 2, Volume 1 are:

Glee Music Jukebox

The Making of the Rocky Horror Glee Show

Exclusive Bonus Song - "Planet, Schmanet, Janet"

Getting Waxed With Jane Lynch

The Wit of Brittany

Glee at Comic-con 2010

	Glee: Season 2, Volume 1	Glee Encore
Recommended Retail Price	$39.90	$24.90
Format	DVD, 3 Discs, Region 3	DVD, 1 Discs, Region 1

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[Glee: The Complete First Season]
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[The Green Hornet Blu-Ray Review and note the Sting on the early May 2011!]
[Hereafter Q&A with Matt Damon and Details of its Blu-Ray & DVD!]
[Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows arriving onto Blu-Ray Combo Pack and DVD!]
[Kungfu Blockbuster Shaolin Promotion!]

Q: How do you evolve a woman in power? All of you are deepening your humanity as characters, is that intentional?
LYNCH: I think so. The characters need to become real and have dimension. And I think the writers have done great with that. I’ve been fed wonderful bits of information about my past. And I always get something neat to say and do. And at the same time, I'm still mean, still very very mean.

Q: Are you more protective now of Glee as a brand, to make sure you guys don’t mess with the formula too much?
LYNCH: I don't have any say over the formula of Glee. That is all Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan. I trust in them, 100%, to protect the Glee brand. What is wonderful is that I'm hearing about glee clubs popping up in high schools; or glee clubs that existed, getting three times more members. A girl came up to me in Chicago and said that three times the amount of kids who auditioned for the musical came out this year. And my own child, the one that’s in school, is in a club called the Glee Kids. I flatter myself, but I think it’s true that it came from our show.

Sue has been given several showstoppers this season.
LYNCH: That’s the secret to American musical theater, is that it’s a convention based on the fact that a character has no choice in this emotionally filled moment but to raise their voice in song, in order to express it. That’s a very vulnerable, raw expression and beautiful. People, I think, find that arresting and thrilling. We don’t fool around with that formula. We don’t do songs just to do songs. There’s a reason, even if it’s just a happy-go-lucky song, there’s a reason. Lea Michele does “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” and it’s her basically imagining her own funeral, and people saying, “I wish I had been nicer to her.”

Q: Glee has been courageous in not shying away from provocative storylines. Will that be the show’s ultimate hallmark?
LYNCH: It’s a high school in Ohio, which is in the middle of the country. Ohio’s one of those places that can go red or blue. It’s kind of red lately and it’s conservative, small town values. You have a gay kid come of age there and it's an interesting thing to see. What we have for the kids is a young man coming to terms with his sexual orientation and his father coming to terms with it as well. In a way that kind is not what you expect. You’d expect him to go, “No son of mine,” you know? He’s actually like, “You are my son, I love you, I don't understand this, it’s a world that’s out of my experience, but I'm going to do my best, 'cause I love you.” And I love that we told that story, instead of the “Get out of the house.”

Q: Have you had a chance to bask in the glow of Glee love around the world?
LYNCH: People outside of the United States have loved us for the American musical theater. I mean, they just adore “Oklahoma,” and they're always big hits overseas. I think that’s one of the exports that we have that has been extremely successful. We are reaping the benefit of that because we stick to that formula. I was in England and I was stopped far more than I am stopped here in Los Angeles by people, just loving the show. We were at the TV Festival in Monaco and we were kind of the buzz. We weren’t nominated for anything. But you know, there were four of us there and we were kind of the toast of that festival. We hadn’t even really done anything yet! People just love it. They just love the music and the kids. It’s the underdog and the “Can Do and Let’s Put on a Show!”

Glee: Season 2, Volume 1 and Glee Encore are available on DVD from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

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Find Glee Star Jane Lynch's response in a Q&A Session